Exploring the Tiny World of Microplastics in Your Own “Lab”

Abstract

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that result from the breakdown of larger plastic objects, such as water bottles, shopping bags, food containers, and many other types of waste. Microplastics can be as small as a bacterial cell or as big as a grain of rice. Microplastics exist in many dierent shapes: some are round and smooth while others are in the shape of fibers or fragments. Scientists have known about microplastics in nature since the 1970s, but lately they are finding these tiny plastics almost everywhere they look -in the air, lakes, rivers, oceans, on land, and even in remote places like Arctic lakes and snow! In this article, we will show you the hidden universe of microplastics, cool tools scientist use to analyze them, and show how you can do your own experiment to analyze microplastics from a nearby beach

This article is based upon work from COST Action CA20101 Plastics monitoring detectiOn RemedIaTion recovery—PRIORITY, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology, https://www.cost.eu). MV acknowledges EU-funded project MS4Plastics (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020—Grant Agreement No. 101023205). IZ gratefully acknowledges the funding from projects SARASWATI 2, PLTKTARENG5, PLTKTARENG73, NANAQUA, and NEUTEN “Identifying best available technologies for decentralized wastewater treatment and resource recovery for India” and SLTKT20427 “Sewage sludge treatment from heavy metals, emerging pollutants and recovery of metals by fungi”, by University of Tartu Development fund PLTKT ARENG5 and by project funded by EU Commission INTERREG “Improving quality of BSR waters by advanced treatment processes”, “In-situ catalytic bioconversion of pharmaceutically active compounds in wastewater“ by CELSA funding, “Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the wastewater treatment sector by autotrophic nitrogen removal as an alternative to heterotrophic processes” by EIC funding and by COST actions: CA20127, CA20138, CA22102, CA22110, CA22123, CA22162, CA22146. TS and JC were supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of the Spanish Government through Grant PID2021-123860OB-I00

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